Cork pair cross Atlantic

AS SEÁN McGowan pulls closer to the half-way stage in his Atlantic odyssey, two Corkmen were celebrating after completing their ocean row.

Peter Williams and Mike Jones landed in Barbados early yesterday morning, Irish time, having rowed from Agadir in Morocco as part of an international crew of six in the boat Sara G. The journey took them 57 days and 20 hours.

Last year Williams – and the soon-to-be-famous Breffny Morgan – were part of an unsuccessful attempt to row the ocean in La Mondiale, but Williams would not let the idea go.

“I’ve been two years trying to do this,” he said yesterday. “It’s a monkey off my back.”

Williams added that he and Jones were proud to be the “first two Corkmen to row an ocean”.

Six other Ireland-based oarsmen have completed the task – brothers Eamon and Peter Kavanagh; Paul Gleeson (along with his Canadian partner Tori Homes); Ray Carroll; Peter Donaldson and Reinhardt von Hoff.

All these were part of crews, but McGowan is attempting the difficult task of doing the row single-handedly. Sixty-six days into the row, and with the attraction of his iPod selections wearing thin, he is glad of the local entertainment: attentive whales.

“A big grey whale came by this morning and he stayed still with his big snout just out of the water. I thought he was a buoy which had broken off. But then he moved and came towards me – and I knew this was no buoy.

“He went around the boat, but then just lay there. I thought he was ill: he had a cut on his back, a big gouge. I’d row, he’d come up beside me. He stayed with me for over an hour, then disappeared. But just now four of them have appeared all together.”

He has made excellent progress in recent days, despite the continuing problem of a broken gate (the oar holder).

He is set to pass halfway tomorrow or Sunday and then he will focus on 1,000 nautical miles (1,850 km) to go.

“You eat the elephant bite by bite,” he says. Four boats have finished, but only one solo craft so far has completed the task.

McGowan is rowing for the charity Soweto Connection, with the aim of providing a nutrition centre in the townships.